Do consumer standard lithium-ion batteries exist yet? (Aside from 18650s, which might barely count).
It's 2024; how come companies like Sony, Panasonic, Energizer and Duracell haven't jumped on offering one or two standard replaceable lithium-ion cells, with integrated circuit protection and slim enough for modern consumer electronics, that people can buy off-the-shelf in drug stores? Many devices are still running on alkaline batteries these days, like smoke detectors and kitchen scales.
It didn't take that long in the old days for standards like AA and AAA batteries to hit the market, and they didn't worry too much about applying them to new chemistries with differing voltages. And with efficient DC-DC converters that are cheap enough to introduce into consumer electronics, battery voltage hardly even matters that much nowadays.
Kind-of, you can typically get rechargeable lithium versions of the same form factor as alkaline batteries, as well as the fact that many "proprietary" batteries like digital camera batteries are actually pretty common and standard, or widely available. For example, if you design a device to take standard gopro batteries, that will be easy to get for a long time. Standard button cells, which have been lithium for a long time, can be obtained in rechargeable versions.
However a major issue is that the charging circuitry/method/design is not standard for rechargeable versions of non-rechargeable standard batteries. So you often need to remove it and charge it with a charging system from the battery manufacturer instead of charging in place.
I've had a few gadgets -- for example, an Instax bluetooth instant photo printer -- that ran off of batteries originally introduced by Nokia for phones around 2000 (BLC-1/2), including charging them. I doubt many people buy them for their Nokia 3310 these days, but they're readily available from many manufacturers[1]. I think some old Canon DSLR battery form factor is used similarily.
[1] Many manufacturers, possibly a single factory somewhere in China.
Are any of those rechargeable li-ion batteries sold at the drug store to put in your smoke detector? Industrial standards exist, but that's not the same as consumer standards.
I think you are moving the goalposts. The batteries I linked to are consumer standard lithium chemistry batteries that people can buy off-the-shelf in drug stores and be used in smoke detectors and kitchen scales.
In order for them to function: They've each got charge circuitry, buck converter circuitry (to get down from 5v to ~3.7v lithium voltage for charging, and from ~3.7v lithium voltage down to 1.5v to be compatible with end-user devices), and each one includes its own USB C port.
No we’re talking about rechargeable batteries here… disposable lithium are too expensive and wasteful for frequently used high drain devices. I love them for emergency equipment like spot trackers and emergency strobe lights
I bought a set of AA lithium from Amazon not too long ago, hoping to solve the problem of disposable batteries. They had a micro USB port in the side for recharging and everything.
Sadly, they were crap and stopped working after one charge. More e-waste.
It's 2024; how come companies like Sony, Panasonic, Energizer and Duracell haven't jumped on offering one or two standard replaceable lithium-ion cells, with integrated circuit protection and slim enough for modern consumer electronics, that people can buy off-the-shelf in drug stores? Many devices are still running on alkaline batteries these days, like smoke detectors and kitchen scales.
It didn't take that long in the old days for standards like AA and AAA batteries to hit the market, and they didn't worry too much about applying them to new chemistries with differing voltages. And with efficient DC-DC converters that are cheap enough to introduce into consumer electronics, battery voltage hardly even matters that much nowadays.